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How to permanently DISABLE plugins (not addons)?

  • 4 replies
  • 11 have this problem
  • 2 views
  • Last reply by cor-el

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I want to completely and permanently remove (if it's impossible - just disable) several plugins. The thing is, they just won't. Stay. Disabled. Even after clicking "Disable" button, they somehow still work. For example if I disable Flash plugin, youtube still uses flash for it's videos, and not HTML5 (in youtube options I opted for using HTML5 technology, so it's not problem on their end).

Second thing - after I restart Firefox, disabled plugins are being shown as enabled, like I didn't do a thing to them.

I'd rather avoid clean FF reinstall, as I have lots of saved cookies and I'd rather not go through the process of logging in for sites linked with them.

I want to completely and permanently remove (if it's impossible - just disable) several plugins. The thing is, they just won't. Stay. Disabled. Even after clicking "Disable" button, they somehow still work. For example if I disable Flash plugin, youtube still uses flash for it's videos, and not HTML5 (in youtube options I opted for using HTML5 technology, so it's not problem on their end). Second thing - after I restart Firefox, disabled plugins are being shown as enabled, like I didn't do a thing to them. I'd rather avoid clean FF reinstall, as I have lots of saved cookies and I'd rather not go through the process of logging in for sites linked with them.

All Replies (4)

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hello, this might be bug #839728. you might want to try closing all tabs with plugins running in the background first & then go to the addons manager to disable the plugins...

Modified by philipp

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Tried it, didn't work. I had only about:addons tab open, disabled every plugin (silverlight, java, flash...), waited some time, restarted firefox, checked plugins again anf there they were. Enabled and mocking me.

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it might take a few minutes before all plugins running in the background are terminated (i myself am affected by this same bug). can you try to close all tabs except about:addons, then restart the browser to make sure that no plugins run in the background when the session is restored & then try disabling them again...

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You can set the plugin.expose_full_path pref to true on the about:config page to see the full path of plugins on the about:plugins page.

It is best not to leave that pref set to true as it exposes that full path to web servers via the navigator.plugins object, so reset that pref to false after you are done with the about:plugins page.

See "Manually uninstalling a plugin":